


Paterfamilias

by kakfa (orphan_account)



Series: Avatar in the time of Quarantine [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ...to say the least, AU, Dysfunctional Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23703523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kakfa
Summary: The Fire Lord is a dragon. His brother is a snake. That much Lu Ten knows, even away in exile.
Series: Avatar in the time of Quarantine [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699612
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	Paterfamilias

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: lu ten lives. i'm in between other prompts right now. somehow this was the one i ended up writing. AU.
> 
> as always, im accepting other prompts through my PMs! no guarantees -- but i will consider them.

“Uncle?”

He hasn’t seen his uncle in years. Hasn’t seen another member of his family in years. All that tends to fall away when you’re in exile, and you’ve honed your entire life to a singular purpose. The seasons change and the places change, but his mission does not.

Staring at his uncle now, however, makes the lost time come back to him. He was nineteen, and it was a hot summer’s day when he’d been exiled. It is autumn now, where the leaves turn a bright red and the ice around the mountains begin to thicken. The winds are cool and the nights are cold. It’s been three years since his exile began.

“What are you doing here?”

“Lu Ten,” Ozai sighs. His face is gaunt, and the hem of his cloak is tinged with mud. “I find myself… wanting to join you on your expedition. Will you have me?”

He is so thrown off by the question that all he can do is say “yes, of course,” and have the first mate prepare a suitable room for his uncle – who is still of higher rank than he, the exile prince. Ozai takes this with nothing but a somber nod before disappearing below deck.

Lu Ten turns away. Around him his men ready the ship for their departure. The trees sway, the red leaves fall.

Everything begins to disappear into the distance.

Then, the sea air fills his lungs. The ship makes a steady hum, and they’re headed for the South Pole.

The Ozai of old would not have asked. The Ozai before Lu Ten’s exile – the Ozai before his assignment as the regent of Ba Sing Se, before Iroh’s coronation, would not have asked. He would not even be here, in fact, talking to an exile with no standing in the eyes of the Fire Nation court.

Unless there is some benefit in Ozai being here. His father had always lamented Ozai’s proclivity for scheming, after all.

But he can’t bring himself to care – his head swirls with the memory of his homeland, and he finds himself yearning. This time of the year, the capitol would be at its most beautiful; there would be festivals celebrating another successful harvest and praising Agni for all His gifts. Navy men on shore leave, beautiful women in their best robes. Children racing down the streets.

What news of the capitol does Ozai bring?

There will be time, plenty of time, while they travel to the South Pole. And Lu Ten has nothing but time now.

* * *

Ozai emerges at dawn the next day, while he practices his firebending.

Before his ascension as the dragon of the Fire Nation, his father had been the Dragon of the West, a prodigious firebender. Of course Lu Ten doesn’t hold any hope of emulating, and not even surpassing, this great legacy. But he gets up and practices at dawn because it’s what they used to do, back when his father had time to train him. To rise with the sun, to breathe in its power; that was one of the first things Iroh had taught him.

“You are your father’s son through and through,” Ozai says, and Lu Ten turns in surprise. They’re in the middle of the sea, no land to be seen for miles, with nothing but the newly risen sun waiting for them in the horizon.

Ozai’s brow is furrowed. “You have his skill. That little – “ Here an undercurrent of disgust is apparent, and it almost makes Lu Ten smile, because is there anything more like his uncle than his uncle’s contempt? “ – _flourish,_ I’m sure, is something your father taught you as well.”

You don’t earn a title like _Dragon of the West_ without some flamboyancy. Lu Ten doesn’t say this though – talking to his uncle is about as easy as navigating a battlefield, and the relationship between his father and his uncle is just as complicated.

But to his surprise, Ozai goes on. “We used to train like this. Before Iroh was sent to the front lines, of course. I am not surprised he passed this on to you.”

This time, Lu Ten allows himself the barest of smiles. He has always liked hearing stories of when his father was younger. But his eagerness to continue the conversation gets away from him, and he finds himself saying without thought, “Zuko once told me you had him and Azula do the same thing.”

Lu Ten glances at his uncle out of the corner of his eye. Ozai somehow looks even paler under the fresh sunlight, the soft glow of morning highlighting the hollows in his cheeks. Lu Ten prepares for one of his uncle’s scathing remarks – but instead, he is met by silence.

And, only after a moment that feels like forever, Ozai simply says, “So I did.”

Lu Ten doesn’t apologize for mentioning his uncle’s dead children. Agni knows Ozai – or at least, the Ozai of old, not this new, more thoughtful Ozai – would have hated such a willful display of weakness.

All thoughts of home, of lazy festivals under the autumn sun, burn away in his mind.

Ozai is a plotter, his father had once told him. It had been one of the nights they spent together in between war campaigns and celebrations in the Fire Nation capital. They shared a cup of tea while they spoke in front of a warm fire. Ozai is a plotter, and that is what makes him dangerous, his father said. He cannot be left alone, to create trouble.

And here they were, on his ship traveling to the edge of the world – what trouble did Ozai intend to cause now?

His uncle retreats below deck. Lu Ten continues firebending, like he hasn’t been there at all.

* * *

Ozai calls him to his cabin that night.

Most of the ship, besides the night’s watch, is asleep. Ozai’s chambers are dark, lit only by the candles whose flames grow and shrink by an invisible rhythm. A firebending exercise, he recognizes – though when he steps in the cabin, the candleflames shrink to normal size.

His uncle is sitting at the far end of the room, gazing at the hearth. “Come, Lu Ten.”

He does as he is told; he sits across his uncle, and only then does he recognize that there is also a pot of tea waiting. Beside the teapot is a cup of half-finished tea. Ozai silently pours Lu Ten another cup.

“I assume you wonder why I’ve decided to accompany you,” His uncle says.

Lu Ten nods, holding the cup in his hand. He takes a sip of the tea – jasmine. It tastes exactly like the way his father used to make it. 

“Your search in the last three years has been fruitless,” Ozai continues. His voice is even. Not accusatory at all.

“We will find him,” Lu Ten replies tiredly. “He is out there. Somewhere.”

“Your father has given you a meaningless task,” Not once does his uncle’s gaze stray from the hearth. There is – there is a glare, and a hatred behind those eyes, but they are not directed at him. “He doesn’t expect you to return. And here I found you still laboring under his pretense.”

His gaze cuts straight to his uncle. But his uncle never flinches. Calm, dangerous as ever, Ozai says, “Has it never occurred to you why all members of the Royal Family have been sent away from the Capital? Why _we_ are all that remain?”

He feels heat in his palms. His father is right. Ozai _is_ here to scheme. “You could have returned home. He didn’t banish _you._ He made you regent of Ba Sing Se.”

“Yes, after he conducted a purge of the Lower Ring, and only over the corpses of my family. I expect Iroh did not think I would survive his attack on my family. But being away in Ba Sing Se, separated from our homeland, served him just as well.”

“My father is a – “

“ – a good man?” Finally, his uncle looks at him. “Your grandfather is dead. Thousands of Earth Kingdom civilians in Ba Sing Se are dead. Ursa is dead. Azula is dead. Zuko is dead.”

“Father cared for Zuko – “

“ – and now my son lies dead in a ravine, somewhere in the Earth Kingdom,” Ozai snaps. “Where I should be. Where I would have been, if Iroh had his way.”

“He couldn’t have,” Lu Ten says. But his blood runs cold and whatever heat, whatever flame inside him has extinguished. The room feels hot. Too hot, sitting before the hearth, surrounded by these candles, and by his uncle’s words.

“You know the truth.”

Ozai sips his tea.

And all around them, the candlelight remains steady, unmoving.

Lu Ten remembers his father singing: little soldier boy, come marching home. Brave soldier boy, come marching home. He’d always told Lu Ten to come home safe, whenever his unit was deployed.

“I did what I thought was right,” Lu Ten says, his throat tight. He doesn’t know why, but – Ozai _must_ understand. Nobody, _nobody_ had been there for him, when he’d been exiled. Not even his father. Especially not his father. His mother had been dead for years. His cousins had been dead for days.

Lu Ten bows his head, cursing himself for his weakness. “I – I would never have thought he’d exile me for speaking out, but – “

Ozai doesn’t move. Merely shifts his gaze back into the fire. “Yet here you are.”

“ – Here _we_ are,” Lu Ten finally grinds out. “ _Why_ are you here, uncle?”

Silence.

His uncle stares into the fire. The flames don’t grow. The candles stay lit.

Then: “I suppose you are ready.”

Ozai puts his tea down. “Fire Lord Sozin once said that with the comet, a golden age for the Fire Nation would be ushered in. A golden age that would last a thousand years, and would turn his house into a dynasty to last eternity.”

Lu Ten shakes his head. What good has it done their house, to have these words sown onto fate by Sozin? Sozin’s children all squabbled for the throne. Azulon had favored his father until the Fire Sages had prophesied a great bloodline to be born from Ursa and Ozai’s marriage. Lu Ten’s own cousins are dead – and here he sits with Ozai, in the middle of the ocean, plotting and scheming.

“We know now that this is not true. A hundred years have passed and we are no closer to any grand vision Sozin might have once had. This war must end.”

“A civil war will be worse,” Lu Ten manages. What his uncle is speaking is _treason,_ of the highest order. To end the Hundred Year War; to undo decades of Fire Nation history. It cannot be done – it can’t be so simple. “We can’t do that to our own people.”

“No,” Ozai acknowledges. “We cannot. But to strike decisively, in one blow. With allies, with others who look for peace. To end it, all at once.”

He almost laughs. “Peace, uncle? My father once believed in peace, a long time ago. _You_ – you would not have believed in it either.”

“Perhaps,” Ozai shrugs. But Lu Ten blinks, and it isn’t just him this time, because the candlelight now burns taller, and the hearth glows molten orange, and all the shadows in the room, even those under Ozai’s eyes, seem to melt into nothing. “Perhaps Iroh was that man once. But something has changed. You are right. He would not have banished you, before.”

Before Ba Sing Se, goes unsaid. Before all Iroh’s great victories. Before Ozai’s marriage to Ursa. Before his mother’s death, even. Before all this power and paranoia.

And it also goes unsaid, but it is what Lu Ten now begins to believe: Ba Sing Se has changed Ozai too. He looks like a man with nothing to his name now. No father, no children, no wife, no brother; nothing but the truth remains.

The truth and Lu Ten.

And Lu Ten has nothing but him.

Lu Ten swallows, then nods. “Where do we begin?”

* * *

At dawn, the sun burns brighter than usual. It rips through the misty morning, dispelling any fog within moments.

Their ship has changed course. They now head for the nearest port, in the Earth Kingdom. From there he and his uncle will travel on foot, to a bar. A bar where, for a few hours in the afternoon every fifth day of the week, an old man will entertain any travelers who want to play some pai sho.

But for now they train. Ozai continues where Iroh had left off in his firebending lessons, all those years ago.

And for a moment, all feels strangely as it should be: they are two firebenders under the sun, on a boat, moving away from the edge of the world.

Uncle and nephew, princes of the Fire Nation, fugitives hereafter.


End file.
